Top left to bottom right: Andrea Rozario, director general, SHIP, Stuart Wilson, managing partner, Equity Advice, Peter Welch, head of sales, Bridgewater, Simon Little, managing director, Autumn Life Retirement Solutions, Julian Wells, marketing director, HML, Jon King, managing director, More 2 Life, James Prosser, show director, Mortgage Business Expo, Claire Barker, chair- man, ERSA, Dean Mirfin, group director, Key Retirement Solutions, Darren Dicks, head of marketing, Aviva, Vanessa Owen, head of equity release, LV=, Robert Sinclair, director, AIFA and AMI
so tunnel-visioned about this one product they’re missing the opportunities that are out there to grow this market. We need to cross the bridge. There is huge potential demand out
there. Pensioners in the UK are dying because they don’t have enough to live on despite owning their own homes. We have providers with cash sitting on the sidelines waiting for the market to become more mature and bigger. But there’s a gap in between and we can’t seem to connect the two. I think intermediaries could broaden their outlook for their clients and look at later life and all the dynamics within that market. Equity release is just one part of that.
is there a disconnect betWeen traditional broker clients and those needing equity release? Robert Sinclair: This is structural because mortgage brokers tend to end up doing equity release as well as
mortgages. There’s a regulatory psyche that borrowers should be repaying their mortgages but equity release turns that on its head by saying, once you’ve paid the mortgage off you can borrow again. These are two entirely conflicting issues. From a customer perspective equity release is part of planning de- accumulation and that is usually done in the IFA sector. The rule book for equity release is effectively sitting under a mortgage structure and not under retirement planning. It’s in the wrong place in my view. I believe it’s these issues that are preventing equity release gaining the momentum it needs. Peter Welch: Yes, but we still have chartered financial planners choosing to ignore the product when they advise. They simply look at the annuity side without considering the value of the client’s home. In the short term I agree that equity release advisers are very transactional in the way they do business, they don’t have a client bank. I would urge all brokers to forge relationships with the advisers who are
doing the at retirement planning and disturb them a bit to try and get equity release included in the conversation. JK: Surely the market responds to demand. Only three or four years ago there was a big push to get people to qualify to advise on equity release but a lot of those people are not doing any of this sort of business because there’s no one knocking on their door saying help. That’s why I think the push has to be with the public to create a general demand.
should brokers be thinking about financial planning not selling equity release then? DD: Aviva’s key message over the past 18 months has been looking at clients over their lifetime. There is a huge amount of apathy out there in the general IFA community to look at equity release as part of de-accumulation. I’m not sure what the answer is but we need to keep getting the message out there that you can’t look at someone’s entire
mortgage introducer MARCH 2011 37
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